Transnational criminal organizations are no longer just drug traffickers and extortionists.
According to Europol’s 2025 EU Serious and Organized Crime Threat Assessment (SOCTA) report, they’ve evolved into key players in hybrid warfare, renting out their skills, resources, and networks to hostile state actors like Russia and Belarus.
The result is a dangerous blurring of lines between organized crime, cyber operations, and geopolitical conflict — and a growing threat to European democracies.
“Criminal organizations are agile, borderless and they work to destabilize,” said Catherine De Bolle, executive director of Europol, in an interview with Euronews.
“If they see an opportunity to work with a state actor, they will work with a state actor — if it gives them access to money, cyber infrastructure, or power.”
Organized Crime Has Gone Global — and Political
Europol’s report paints a picture of a “DNA mutation” in the world of organized crime.
Gone are the days of mafias confined to national borders. Today’s crime syndicates operate on a global scale, taking full advantage of digital anonymity, cyber tools, and AI to expand their reach and relevance.
Cybercriminals now often work double shifts, says De Bolle: serving the interests of state-backed operations by day — and running profitable side-hustles by night.
These criminals are now embedded in state-sponsored infrastructures, acting as private military proxies, conducting cyberattacks, smuggling weapons, laundering money, or disrupting critical systems — often without direct fingerprints tying back to a state.
This hybrid evolution allows governments with adversarial intent to outsource aggression to criminal actors, effectively privatizing war tactics without triggering international accountability.
Artificial Intelligence and Cybercrime
Artificial intelligence has become one of the defining tools of this hybrid landscape.
Europol’s analysts now see AI as a primary weapon in cyber-enabled organized crime, used for surveillance, phishing, identity theft, and disinformation at scale.
This technological arms race is erasing the line between criminal activity and state-sponsored attacks, creating a new breed of actors who are as comfortable in the dark web as they are in the corridors of power.
And it’s not just online.
Criminal gangs operating out of Russia and Ukraine, bolstered by wartime experience and access to military-grade weaponry, are expected to penetrate further into the EU, making physical smuggling, violence, and influence campaigns harder to stop.
“They will be very knowledgeable about cyber. They will have a lot of weapons at their disposal,” warned De Bolle. “Monitoring this will be very important for the future.”
Illegal Migration as a Weapon of Destabilization
One of the most visible examples of this new hybrid warfare is weaponized migration — an operation where state actors collaborate with crime syndicates to orchestrate illegal border crossings and politically disruptive refugee flows.
Poland has been one of the most affected EU nations. Polish Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Duszczyk explained that many migrants — from countries like Somalia, Iraq, and Egypt — are being funneled toward the EU not through traditional Mediterranean routes, but via Belarus and Russia, suggesting a deliberate attempt to destabilize.
“This is the modus operandi of criminal gangs who cooperate very closely with the Belarusian and Russian governments,” he said. “Without state involvement, these migration routes wouldn’t exist.”
The threat is growing — and so is Europe’s response. EU Commissioner for Internal Affairs Magnus Brunner announced that the SOCTA report will be submitted to the European Council, with a commitment to double Europol’s staffing in the coming years.
Europol’s 2024 budget stood at €220 million, but Brunner admits that much more funding will be needed to tackle the scale of organized crime’s mutation.
Officials are especially worried about post-war Ukraine, where a security vacuum could create ideal conditions for organized crime to flourish, combining leftover weapons, weakened institutions, and cross-border smuggling routes.
